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The World Wide Web, or Web for short, is a hypertext-based information system distributed throughout the world. A Web document, or Web page, generally contains highlighted words (usually underscored) which are hypertext links pointing to additional information, available locally or elsewhere in the world.
The WWW makes it extremely easy to access the vast resources of the Internet. Its hypermedia capabilities empower technical and nontechnical people alike with a simple, inexpensive, yet powerful means of providing information to a local or worldwide audience.
Web documents are written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) -- a very simple and easy to learn set of tags that support basic online formatting, document structure and presentation of hypermedia documents.
Web browsers, like NCSA Mosaic and Netscape, are used to "get on the Web" and to read WWW documents. The simplicity and effectiveness of Web browsers are significantly responsible for the phenomenal explosion of the Web.
Lastly, to browse the Web, one needs access to the Internet (either, via an ADN-ii network connection, a local Internet provider, or via telephone with SLIP, MacSLIP or PPP) and an address of an Internet resource, which is specified by a Uniform Recorce Locator, or URL. Information providers generally include lots of URLs (disguised under meaningful hypertext links) on their Web home pages or starting point documents.
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Last Revision: July 11, 1995